Iron and iodine are essential for good health, yet billions of people around the world aren’t getting enough. Iron deficiency can lead to anemia, fatigue and poor growth in children, while iodine deficiency can cause thyroid problems and developmental delays.
A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a new way to add both nutrients to everyday foods and drinks without changing their taste or texture. The tiny nutrient “capsules” can be mixed into items like bread, coffee, tea or salt, and can survive months of storage, high humidity and even boiling water.
“We’re creating a solution that can be seamlessly added to staple foods across different regions,” said Ana Jaklenec, a principal investigator at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
Current fortification methods can be tricky, especially with iron. In many foods, it reacts with other ingredients, creating off flavors or making it harder for the body to absorb. The MIT team’s approach protects the nutrients until they reach the stomach, where they break down and release their contents.
The new particles, nicknamed NuMOFs, can hold both iron and iodine together without them interfering with each other’s absorption, a long-standing challenge for double fortification. In tests with mice, both nutrients entered the bloodstream within hours of consumption.
Because the technology can also carry other minerals like zinc or calcium, the researchers hope it could become a flexible way to address multiple deficiencies at once. They are now exploring products such as fortified coffee, tea and salt, as well as ways to add it to regional staple foods in countries where nutrient deficiencies are most common.
If successful in human trials, the method could make it far easier to boost nutrient intake without changing eating habits, simply by enhancing foods people already enjoy.
“We are very excited about this new approach and what we believe is a novel application of metal-organic frameworks to potentially advance nutrition, particularly in the developing world,” says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and a member of the Koch Institute.
This research, published in Matter, was partially supported by J-WAFS Fellowships for Water and Food Solutions.